Episode 7 - My top 5 tips to refresh your brand and level up your business

In this episode, I teach how you how you can refresh your business brand whatever your budget!

Injecting fresh new energy into your brand is one of the best ways to increase customers – especially after the recent covid-19 crisis.

In this episode I share my 5 top tips on how to refresh your business – so it looks and feels like brand new – without the hefty  marketing spend.

You’ll learn the tools I use and you can too – to level up your online brand. These are five easy ways you can improve your brand instantly – whether you decide to Do It Yourself or hire a professional to help you.

I don’t know about you but I can’t believe we’re already in June. 2020 has certainly been interesting, to say the least and if you’re like me – the plans you laid out at the end of last year may not be applicable in the ‘new normal’ today.

One minute you’re stuck in traffic, cramped in an elevator and sharing ideas, and next you’re struggling to hear your team mates on Zoom and living life in lockdown!

So how do you bounce back after something like this?

Whatever your situation I think injecting a fresh new energy into your business brand is the best way to get back out there after this period of time.

I’ve had so many business owners reach out to me in the last few weeks who are ready to get themselves back out there after being in a period of downtime.

So here’s a few tips of how I’m helping them – that you might find useful in your own business. These 5 things are tips you can do yourself, or you can hire a professional to help you with.

When was the last time you looked at your website copy?

There is NO better time than right now to go through each page word by word and make sure it clearly reflects your brand and your values.

Today, the first thing we do when hearing about a business is jump online and check out their online channels. You’ve got about 10 secs to impress, so make sure every word on each page is exactly how you want your business to come across.

If you’re not in love with your website and the copy on it – it’s time to spend some time relooking at this.

I don’t know about you, but I’m finding any excuse to dress up and get out of my standard uniform of active wear. This is the perfect time to do a brand photoshoot, update your profile photo and also relook at your product images.

With restrictions easing many photographers are happy to social distance but help you get amazing new shots for your business.

If you haven’t already listened to Episode 4 where I talk to Prue Aja – be sure to check that out – as it’s got heaps of tips on how to DIY and get some really great images yourself with simply your smart phone.

If you do have a little bit of money to spend though, you can’t go past getting a professional to do this.

If you visit any page on my website you will see I have some really great photographs.  I had Prue Aja do my photographs here in Melbourne and it has honestly been the best money I’ve spent on my business since I started 3 years ago.  I constantly get comments about my website and I know my imagery has a LOT to do with that first impresssion I make.

We’re often think that the more we do, the better our business looks, but the fact of the matter is – sometimes doing less and doing it really well – is better than trying to be ALL things to all people.

This is a really hard one – especially if you’re like me and you have a really broad skill set.  This is something I have really committed to doing in my own business in 2020.  In the past I’ve been someone that offers lots of different services to my clients. This year my mantra is less is more. I’m focusing my business on 3 key products – my copywriting, my marketing strategy services and doing books.

Having 1 to 3 really amazing products directly targeted to your market, is way better than offering 15 different products and services in a half assed way.

Now is the perfect time to sit down and review your service and product offering and value proposition.

It might be the right time to focus on doing less but doing it really well, instead of spreading yourself too thin and trying to offer too much. It can be really hard to commit to niching your offering down because it means really backing yourself – but trust me when I say that doing this really pays off.

When was the last time you checked out the open rate on your emails and newsletter?  Do you even know what you’re average open rate is?

If you don’t know, maybe it’s time to check it out. There’s no point sending emails to people if they’re not reading them.
SO – my top tip here is to spend some time going through your subscriber list.
Identify who your inactive subscribers are  then think of ways you can reengage them – can you do a mail out and put out an offer to entice them to reconnect with you?

Are you able to offer a value add freebie or a special discount? What about your engaged audience – can you reward your active subscribers by offering them some kind of referral? Even a thank you email is always appreciated and can go a long way for customer engagement.

My fave tool to use for this is Mailchimp – email marketing is one of the most important tools in your toolkit because your building an audience that you solely own. Not instagram, not facebook – you own it.

MailChimp is super user-friendly. And super flexible. I love that it’s been designed for non-technical people and I know plenty of my clients use and love this tool as well.

Social media is one of those things that often gets put in the too hard basket, bottom of the pile when it comes to your digital marketing or content marketing.  It can be something you think is less important and you just deal with your social media when you get a chance.

I’m guilty of this sometimes and it’s just so important for your brand and presence online to ensure your social media is engaging and attracting the right customers.

Spend some time mapping out your socials – set up a content calendar and invest in getting a social media strategy together if you don’t have one.  Having a really clear plan for your socials is so important –  you might not have images or captions ready but content themes can help you decide those. I like to plan three months ahead on my socials and then I use a really cool tool on my mobile and desktop to schedule all my posts in.  This makes it so much easier for me to keep my audience engaged by regularly posting.

I still like to keep things flexible for those moments of inspiration where I want to share something with my audience, but I also forward plan what I’m going to say, and when I’m going to say it, to ensure I’m constantly showing up and adding value.

Now I know sometimes working out what to post both visually and in terms of what you want to say can be really hard.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed – don’t worry. Engage someone who can help you with your captions.

So here’s two great tools I use for my social media on a daily basis that you can too!

# 1. Canva

First up, Canva – oh what would I do without it? I wouldn’t say I’m a natural graphic designer, but that’s where Canva comes in. It’s free, online and easy to use!  There’s plenty of ideas and inspiration via templates and if you have a premium account like I do, you can also customise your experience by uploading your brand colours and fonts which makes the whole process super easy.

#2 Preview

Secondly I use Preview.app – If you are looking for a simple app to visually plan and schedule basic social media posts from your phone – Preview is it. I love that it comes with a desktop version too. It’s simple, functional and has a great built in feature that lets you search for and add high performing hash tags that you can plot into your posts to help you grow your following and audience reach.

It also has a sneaky function where you can check out your. Competitors and what their engagement is through the tool.

These two tools cost me around $200 per annum and I swear by them. If you’re not using a scheduler or a social media planner to do your posts – you should definitely check these two tools out.